I've made a new server in the spirit of the old Nexus I used to know, back before the silly gimmicks and the scoring system that rewarded bloodlust over tactical skill. (1 point for round wins, 2 points for kills.. what?)

The point isn't to be better than Nexus, or even exactly like Nexus used to be, mostly I've just taken the default settings, sped them up a little, and included some of the things I used to love Nexus for. The slow moving death zone, no rubber, breaks=boost, multi-binds disabled, etcetera.

Scoring is 10 points for a round win, 2 for a kill, and -1 for dying. The idea is that while kills are rewarded and deaths (stupid or otherwise) are punished, what really matters are the wins. Yeah, if you kill alot of people you might come out on top, but not if you only win 3 of 10 rounds.

Lag spikes pop up sometimes, but other than those it's pretty much smooth sailing. If anybody wants to pop in and get a game going, the server will be operating between 3pm and 6am GMT, but it's up 'till 7am on weekends. This is to save on electricity, as I'm running it from home.

Current Hours:
6pm-7am GMT (6am MWF)

Suggestions, comments, complaints;shwankymunky (atnospam) gmail.com

The server is still a work in progress, but I'll take into consideration reasonable requests, the intent being to make this the type of (NO RUBBER) server people really want to play.

Last edited by DaMunky89 on Fri Aug 22, 2008 3:31 am, edited 4 times in total.

Hey, more power to you. Lots of people whine about the settings we have in place now, but few actually do anything about it, so have some props. I should warn you, though, what you've specified there seems like a recipe for the biggest campfest ever. Whether or not that's something you mind is another story.

Alpha Centauri wrote:Hey, more power to you. Lots of people whine about the settings we have in place now, but few actually do anything about it, so have some props. I should warn you, though, what you've specified there seems like a recipe for the biggest campfest ever. Whether or not that's something you mind is another story.

Oh, are you the guy running the real Nexus? I still love the place, don't get me wrong, it's just that I missed the old system. Plus, having my own server gives me a good excuse to get back into the game, I haven't been playing in ages. Maybe my new (and imperfect) imitation of Nexus will divert some of the whiners you're getting.
Edit: Oh hey, I bet you're N9: Alpha, aren't you? You're really good. xD

One of my favorite things I copied off Nexus was the Death Zone as an anti-camp, because it always appears in the center of the map and moves outward. I suppose you could try to camp off on one edge of the map, but it's surely more difficult with no rubber.

My server logs last night showed two guys who were apparently trying to camp, because after close to 10 rounds of both suiciding one commented "You like that? This 'aint like the girl scouts, there's no camping here."

To anybody more knowledgeable than myself; Is there an easy way to track when and how many people are in my server? I'd like to have it running just when people are using it, so I don't break the bank, but it's up when people actually want it up. I.E. if there's two or three people at the end of every night getting kicked out, I'd leave the server up longer at the end of the day. If nobody uses it from 3pm - 6pm GMT, I wouldn't have it start up 'till 6pm GMT.

To anybody else; When do you play Tron the most? Please state timezones, too.

DaMunky89 wrote:To anybody more knowledgeable than myself; Is there an easy way to track when and how many people are in my server? I'd like to have it running just when people are using it, so I don't break the bank, but it's up when people actually want it up. I.E. if there's two or three people at the end of every night getting kicked out, I'd leave the server up longer at the end of the day. If nobody uses it from 3pm - 6pm GMT, I wouldn't have it start up 'till 6pm GMT.

To anybody else; When do you play Tron the most? Please state timezones, too.

There's a global tracking system somewhere. I can't remember the URL. Someone should know. (And then remind me to put it on the links page.)

DaMunky89 wrote:One of my favorite things I copied off Nexus was the Death Zone as an anti-camp, because it always appears in the center of the map and moves outward. I suppose you could try to camp off on one edge of the map, but it's surely more difficult with no rubber.

The game just becomes a whole lot of cat-and-mouse seeing who can avoid the center for the longest, and if players have a significant amount of space in the corners, it's really about who can twist back upon themselves more. The rationale for the instant death zone was that, as an anti-camping device, the time limit should never be reached anyways, so there's now a penalty when it does, regardless of your physical location. Conversely, a randomly-placed death zone was tried out at one point, but I didn't like that much either, because that put it too much up to luck.

Alpha Centauri wrote:The game just becomes a whole lot of cat-and-mouse seeing who can avoid the center for the longest, and if players have a significant amount of space in the corners, it's really about who can twist back upon themselves more. The rationale for the instant death zone was that, as an anti-camping device, the time limit should never be reached anyways, so there's now a penalty when it does, regardless of your physical location. Conversely, a randomly-placed death zone was tried out at one point, but I didn't like that much either, because that put it too much up to luck.

Oh, well I'm okay with that. We don't want it to dissolve into survive-only gameplay, but I prefer that over slaughtering everybody on the map for going over a time limit. xD I get now why you were doing instant death zone back then, even if it did tick me off. *lol*
Edit: Besides, with my settings once death zone kicks in, the game only goes on for another 20 seconds or so at most.

Today was a good day for Neo-Nexus, me and my buddy spent 5 minutes in game and three other people joined us for an hour or so before him and I had to attend to other things. If my server only has people in it when I'm there, that's okay, it'll function as a personal hangout for me and my irl friends.

We've found that matches typically don't go on long enough for people to settle into camping, but that might just be because nobody of that skill level has come to play just yet. I'm happy with it thus far, despite our little lag spikes. Will switching to a Linux distro + dedicated cut those back noticeably? (Noticeably enough to bother spending a day setting it up.)

Also, that Tron Watch is pretty cool, but is there a way to look at servers as opposed to individual players? ^^;

DaMunky89 wrote: I'm happy with it thus far, despite our little lag spikes. Will switching to a Linux distro + dedicated cut those back noticeably? (Noticeably enough to bother spending a day setting it up.)

Typically, yes, but no promises. There are too many potential causes of lag spikes to really be able to predict. And unfortunately, running off a livecd isn't going to give a good estimate of how it will run, because of how livecd's tend to run. So spend the day setting it up, and celebrate. There are zillions of other benefits to running a server on linux that even if it doesn't really address your lag spike issue, you'll still be happier with the server.

well, the guy doesn't seem to be active atm (otherwise he would have sure fixed that), but he left a link to his email at the bottom of each page from that site, maybe you should ping him about it(and about your suggestion)

Ugh, I spent a few hours today trying to install Damn Small Linux on a partition I made, to no avail. I'm sorry guys, but Linux really infuriates me. I think I'll be keeping my usage of the terminal-obsessed OS strictly to my required schoolwork.

I've already got Windows perfectly customized to practically run itself, and be remotely accessible. I think the lag spikes are unavoidable anyway, because we use Cox's broadband service. -There were no problems with lag during non-peak hours last night, like 1am to 2am around here.